Until about a year or 18 months ago, whenever I looked at David Beckham I thought exactly the same thing as Germaine Greer, Doris Lessing and almost every other woman between the ages of seven and 70; "Ooo, David Beckham! A gentle giant! A giant amongst men! In touch with his feminine side - but nevertheless, all man!" I even wrote a book about it - tens of thousands of words to the glory that is Becks.

Or rather, was. Because for the past six months whenever I've looked at him - pratting about in plaits, giggling with Elton, pouting in an Alice band - I've thought things I'd previously never dreamed. Sly asides like "Come, you have delighted us long enough!", or "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" And for the past few weeks, as speculation about a putative migration has grown, the title of a song popular at the time of the first world war has increasingly played on my mind: We Really Don't Want to Lose You, But We Think You Ought to Go.

And the reason? Much as it pains a feminist such as myself to say so, Beckham has been grotesquely, massively, pussy-whipped by his talentless, ambition-hound of a wife. In my defence I would point out that if a woman I'd previously considered strong and accomplished was being remade as a mindless booby by her male partner I'd think she was dick-whipped. But whatever the semantics, it is hard not to think of Samson and Delilah, of splendid beast and piddling parasite, when one recalls Victoria's recent musings: "We've got so many wider interests ... fashion, makeup. I mean, you think, yeah, football's great, and singing's great. But you've got to look at the bigger picture." This is a surreal spin on the royal "We" - as if the cretinously insensitive Duke of Edinburgh started dropping not just himself into the ordure every time he opened his fat yap, but also to influence the attitudes and pronouncements of the previously strong and silent Queen.

During their recent grand tour of the US (shops, Vogue party, shops, MTV Movie Awards, shops), when Beckham was asked if he would consider living in the US, Victoria responded, "He'll have to learn to bounce the ball rather than kick it!" I am no great lover of football, but even I can see that to suggest there is little difference between it and the souped-up girly netball ("basketball") which is a major sport in the US is both insane and insulting.

Asked about whether he wanted to pursue a career in films, Beckham stood his ground for once: "No, people always ask me that. I'm concentrating on my football at the moment - that's the most important thing to me." At which Motor-Mouth, true to form, completely ignored her husband's mild protest and giggled: "James Bond! I can see it!"

It is not hard to see why Beckham, however misguidedly, is going along with his wife's empty-headed game-plan; he is completely in love with the woman, and there is a long tradition in the English working-class of the gentle giant husband giving in to Her Indoors for the sake of a quiet life. My own parents were like this. However, my mother did not seem intent on cutting my father's nuts off - either in the privacy of our home or in front of the world's media.

Why Victoria is pursuing such an ultimately destructive course for this formerly golden union is the stuff of darker motivation. Is it because a small, sentient part of her understands that for all their unisex, all their togetherness, the gap between skill and spin is as big as the gap between two famous people gets? And that by making him more like her - a transient, trivial flibbertigibbet, obsessed with the "bigger picture" of fashion and makeup - her own dismay at her blatant, growingly evident lack of simple talent may be less of a blot on the horizon.

Well, good luck to them, wherever their travels may take them, but I can't help thinking this will end in tears. We know that Oscar Wilde, with characteristic silliness, claimed that each man kills the thing he loves, with a word or a sword - but has anyone ever done it before with a giggle, a soundbite and a photo-opportunity?